[animus] app

[mamadonna]

Player Information

Name: King
Personal LJ: kingrockwell
Age: 25
Contact Info: thelonechimaera (aim), royaltimes (plurk)
Other Characters Played: None!

Character Information

Character Name: The Dolorosa
Character Series: Homestuck
Character Age: 80 sweeps (she looks like she'd be somewhere in her late 30s, early 40s?)
Character Gender: Female
Alternate Universe AU6 - Ancestors
Canon Point: Just prior to her death at the hands of Orphaner Dualscar
Background Link: it's rather little paltry, really
AU Background: Which means it's time to elaborate.

Once upon a time, there was a peaceful planet called Alternia, and on this planet twelve friends decided to play a game. Trollkids and fun, no big deal, right? That unfortunately proved not to be the case, as this game ultimately sunk their entire universe into peril as it tasked the twelve to create a new one to replace it, a task that proved to be beyond their grasp. On the brink of failure, with doom ahead of them, the twelve friends strucke a bargain with Echidna, te mother of all monsters. She promised them that if they scratched their session of the game, it would reset their universe, and it would ensured that the history that unfolded from it would be one where they were more prepared to win. It came with one additional caveat, however, that they would no longer play the game themselves, but instead assume the place of their distant ancestors as those twelve played the game instead. This reset also resulted in the birth of Alternia's new First Guardian, a mirthful gentleman known as Doc Scratch, who would serve to guide the world in fulfillment with Echidna's promise.

What they couldn't have expected was how great an extent their society would change under Doc Scratch's direction, that he would use this new universe to pave the way for the eventual, inevitable, and entirely foregone arrival of his master, Lord English. Under his machinations, Alternia grew to a violent and darwinistic society, led by the tyrannical ruler, Her Imperious Condescension. A strict caste system was put in place that valued trolls by the hue of their blood, with those toward the bottom given little to aspire to beyond slaves and peasants, or worse, regarded as so low to be mutants, subject to immediate death.

It was into this world that the young wiggler who would eventually grow up to be called the Dolorosa was born. Though not born, exactly, as she arrived via meteor, having been created via ectobiology as a paradox clone of her future self by Karkat Vantas some hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years in the future, then sent by Sgrub to a point where she could grow up to become that future self from whom she was paradox cloned. It's complicated, and she was never really aware of it, anyway.

But she certainly had far more to her life than that. Being a jadeblood, she was part of a rare caste raised with the eventual purpose of serving as handmaiden to the Mother Grubs, the subterranean insects through whom the process of troll reproduction was centered. It was a life of high regard due to its importance, and with some luxury. She would fulfill her duties with diligence, and never wanted for anything. Well, almost. Always a midwife, never a mother, she would regularly watch the newly hatched wigglers as they'd head out through the perilous journey through the caverns, a rite of passage where those who survived long enough to emerge to the surface would be deemed worthy of being assigned a lusus and select a hive, to begin their life.

Many of them wouldn't make it, and so the Dolorosa, in violation of accepted procedure, would gather the corpses of those unlucky wigglers to give them some kind of dignified send-off, a burial on the surface. It was on one such trip that something fell from the sky nearby. When she inspected further, she found the impact site of a meteor, with a redblooded wiggler sitting abandoned in the crater. Knowing his mutant blood would make any chance of his being selected by a lusus, or surviving to reach adulthood, she decided to commit the unthinkable act of taking in the little grub as her own, abdicating her duties to the Mother Grub.

This led to a life spent largely in hiding, as their was nothing in Alternian culture that would allow for a troll to raise a wiggler as though she was his lusus, along with the very nature of her son's blood. Due to his unconventional childhood, he was, unlike most trolls, never given a sign, and his lack would eventually come to be his title, as the Signless, but to her she was always her little Starling, a gift she'd received from above. They moved around a lot, and the Dolorosa did her best to instill in her child the values she had come to hold dear, and comfort him through his visions of a kinder world.

In time the culmination of these two things resulted in his speaking out against the Hemospectrum and the society Her Imperious Condescension had formed, and his mother was always there at his side, his first follower and the beginning of his inner circle. In time, as the Signless began to speak of share his visions with the world, the Ψiioniic, a powerful telekinetic mage, and the Disciple, who would chronicle the Signless scriptures, were inspired by his words, and likewise joined him. The Dolorosa accepted them too, becoming something of a den mother to their little troupe as they traveled the seas, spreading the word throughout the world.

They had been careful in this, as was necessary with such heretical ideas, only preaching to the receptive, but as the message of peace, compassion, and equality gained force and grew beyond what they could themselves manage, it eventually came to the attention of the highbloods. They were, to put it lightly, not at all pleased with this heresy, but when they began to violently seek to stamp it out, those so inspired by the message could no longer tolerate it. War erupted, and not only on Alternia, but throughout the intergalactic empire. Not a long one, but certainly bitter, with the Condesce being the weight of their power to crush the revolution and uncover its source. Signless and his closest followers evaded her as long as they could, but as the war continued, their supporters were killed or captured, sometimes assimilated into the Condesce's forces upon defeat, and they eventually found there was no more ground to run on.

Upon their capture, Signless was put to the irons, red-hot as his blood, and tortured until he would recant. He died cursing his captors and their masters and everyone else for good measure, his hate boundless and his expletive deafening as he succumbed to his Suffering. The Condesce took Ψiioniic as her personal pet to power her ship, where he lived far beyond his age at her whim, forever doomed to serve. The Disciple was likewise sentenced to death, but her E%ecutor took mercy on her, and she escaped to ensure the Sufferer's teachings didn't die with him. The Dolorosa herself was sold into slavery, kept as property at the hands of vicious seadwellers. But that wasn't the extent of her punishment.

The Dolorosa hadn't only committed the crime of taking a grub into her care, but also leaving the caverns, of which jadebloods were forbidden. Condesce, in fear of a repeat, could no longer trust the caste to serve the Mother Grubs, and so she culled them in their entirety, assigning her Imperial Drones to carry on their duties. She was the only one remaining, and only to better suffer for her actions.

Stripped of her sign and her name, she was beaten savagely and regularly, forced to submit to the service of the Orphaner Dualscar of Her Condescension's Imperial Navy, and as the sweeps went on, her spark slowly died until she fully submitted, only a faint bitterness left in its place. But the Orphaner had one weakness, his deep kismesal affection for the Marquise Spinneret Mindfang, who managed to continually evade and infuriate him as their rivalry progressed. She had a vicious habit of parading her slaves in front of him as she selected one to make her bedmate, for the express purpose of inflaming his passion, spurning his hate. On one occasion, she went one extra, stealing the slaves from his own vessel for this very purpose. The Dolorosa was among them, and she was the Marquise choice that evening.

She complied hesitantly, driven mainly by fear and Mindfang's psychic manipul8ion, but as it progressed, she had done such a work on Dolorosa both psychologically and psychically that she could never tell whose will was controlling her anymore. Mindfang herself was beginning to develop some form of red investment, but the Dolorosa wouldn't have been able to tell you even on her better days, much less would she be asked.

More certain of his disapproval with the arrangement was Dualscar, fuming with jealousy and the distraction from his own attentions. Mindfang would later say in her journals that her feelings for him had waned, that their quadrant had eventually bored her, but whether she can be expected to be a reliable narrator of her own life remains in question. Suffice to say, the Orphaner decided that an example had to be made, and so he had the Dolorosa assassinated. Her captivity had finally ended. Her suffering was over.

Personality: In some ways, the Dolorosa was the proto-rebel behind the revolutionary. She not only triggered the catalyst by saving Signless, but taught him many things throughout his childhood that only bolstered his hopes of a better world, and encouraged him to see his visions through. She's deeply compassionate and giving, giving greater concern to caring for and protecting others than the possible consequences for herself. Which isn't to say she's necessarily unaware of the consequences, more that she feels her own needs don't outweigh the greater needs of those around her, in most cases.

Whatever stock she'd put in the Hemospectrum as a child was slowly worn away during her work in the caverns, as she witnessed with love grubs of all shades migrate through them, and with grief for those that never completed the journey. By the time she'd found the Signless, it was a case of letting him join those in death or surrendering her own status to protect him, and it ended up being hardly any choice for her at all. She knew at the time that the punishment would be dire for her if it was ever discovered, that life would be difficult for them both, and that it the possibility that it would not ultimately end in their favor was high, but to provide him the chance at least made it all worth it. Even after losing him, she wouldn't have backed down from this, not feeling regret so much as sorrow that the circumstances had conspired against them.

She tends to be very gentle with her charges, and is a generally polite and dignified woman, but can be stern when the situation necessitates, trying to teach with her words as well as her example. She has a soft spot for children, a strong maternal instinct to protect, nurture, and teach them in the wisdom she's accumulated through her years, though none will ever take precedence for her over her Signless. Even in the property of Dualscar and Mindfang, she would have cared for her fellow slaves, making herself a target for their keepers in order to spare them, eating less of her share to ensure that they were better fed. It's even perhaps possible that she exerted herself to Mindfang's attention so that the others would pass unharmed. Unlike her descendant, she does her best to avoid violence, often seeking to mediate matter through peaceful resolution, but when a threat presents itself she will neutralize it with full capability. She likes to believe in the best of people, though she has been met with quite the opposite in the past. Nonetheless, she does her best to maintain some level of hope for the future.

This hope, however, is tempered now with some amount of fear, as she's already been robbed of it before. After her sweeps spent enslaved, after seeing her son tortured to death before her, having everything she's held dear taken from her, the last thing she wants is a repeat. It presents some conflict to her, because she wants to whatever is possible to prevent it from happening again, but at the same time she's borne so much pain already that she may display some hesitation before taking on that burden once more. It is, at the same time, countered with a considerable degree of bitterness toward those who placed her and those she cares about in such a position, which results in stubbornness and a lack of patience for those who may hold and abuse similar authority. She's been bent, but she does not fully break, and will dig in her heels and fight harder when faced with a similar maneuver.

Abilities: Nothing particularly uncharacteristic of an Alternian troll, aside from being particularly Fucking Tall. She has grey skin, jade blood, long horns, and stands at about 6'6", but canon provides her no extraordinary abilities.

Sample Entry: here!